Counting

I got to spend the weekend before the wedding with my fantastic sister. She moved to Minneapolis last summer – the first of us to truly leave the nest – and I got to fly out to visit her for one day before we road-tripped home. Nearly twelve hours of driving, done in one day, sped along the way by musicals and Disney music. We were so proud.

That girl then took over as the best maid of honor a bride could ask for. She threw a ballin’ bachelorette party: she hired a limo, invited a few of my closest friends out for dinner at Soho (incredible Japanese restaurant, ask about the thick noodles and their blackberry sangria), then an evening at Escape the Room (they lock you in a themed room and you have to follow the clues to find your way out in an hour – so much fun). I knew I didn’t want the traditional dinner-at-the-Cheesecake-Factory routine, and she took it and ran with it. And everybody that went had a great time!

As our resident stage manager we charged her with setting up the main attraction for the ceremony: the pipe-and-drape background. And for the first time in a really long time the Theatre Twins were back in action, fighting with strands of white twinkle lights that are really fickle and don’t want to work unless you ask them nicely, hoisting metals poles twelve feet in the air and then bringing them back down because OH MY GOD THE LIGHTS DON’T REACH THE FLOOR. It brought me back to our theatre days at college when she’d run around with a binder and a coffee and I’d follow her in her stage-manager duties before our call time that evening. And it felt so good to be back working with her.

See, that’s what’s been so strange about her living so far away: we’ve never had that before. When we went to college I was only there by myself for a year, and even then it was only forty minutes away so I was home all the time on the weekends. Then when she finally got there we ran in some of the same circles, worked on the same shows, had countless dinner and let’s-say-we’re-going-to-the-gym-but-really-sit-and-watch-a-movie-in-your-dorm dates. We’ve really never been apart; our lives have been pretty similar.

It was so different to be in Minneapolis and to be introduced to the new life she’s built a thousand miles away from the familiar where I stayed. “This is my house that I live with people that were strangers a year ago, this is the apartment that I’m about to move into with the roommate that I found, this is the place where I work, this is where I’m starting a new job soon, let me take you to this great little bar I love.” (It was great – nothing like Blue Moon and deep-fried cheese curds to warm your heart on a cold April day.) She packed her stuff, drove there alone, and made herself a life that, for a twenty-two-year-old, is pretty put-together. Just because she wanted to. She’s a theatre major so she does a lot of short-term work with unpredictable hours and heavy workloads – and she’s great at it. She’s constantly hunting, applying, fighting for more work, because she knows that’s the only way she’ll achieve her dreams of going to New York someday and working in a coveted position on Broadway.

In her maid-of-honor speech she called me “brave” and I remember giving her this funny look. While she admires me for the choices I’ve made I sit back in amazement at the future she’s developing for herself. She’s not afraid to go wherever she needs to to make her dreams a reality, but she maintains that individuality that makes her my best friend. She knows what she thinks and she stands up for what she believes, regardless of who might disagree. She is kind to strangers and good with little kids but has the guts to tell someone that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to. She is loved and respected by the people who have taken over as her Minnesota family.

She’s always been the brave one, the one I’ve watched and tried to imitate for years. I focus more on being my own person now rather than her shadow, but I still watch in awe and respect as she becomes more and more successful, more and more happy, more and more independent. I am so proud of her, and I was beyond blessed to spend so much time with her this past month.

Also, I think another road trip should be in the works. Because that was a blast and a half.